Goodbye 2025. Hello 2026!

I’ve not been in a very productive mood recently. I don’t know what the issue has been, but I’ve been struggling to sit down and focus on getting anything done for more than about ten minutes at a time. So after a few weeks of chipping away at them, I finally managed to get some Dark Riders done for my Dark Elves just before Christmas. I was really hoping to get the post about them up before now, but it seems that my low executive function decided to be a bastard again, so I’m going to have to roll them into this end of year post.

So yeah, these are my newest Dark Riders. They weren’t planned to be my next thing, but they were in my backlog anyway and I’ve signed up for an Old World event in January, so they got bumped up my list of priorities.

I reckon they turned out alright. Certainly not my best work, but they look decent enough as a unit and help to fill out my Core units. I’ve got a bunch of other bits to get done too. I’ll cover that later though, as that’ll be in my plans for early 2026.

So those are my last models of 2025, which means it’s time for my traditional end of year group photo!

As you can no doubt see, I actually got a fair amount done this year, raking up a respectable 278 points. It's certainly my lowest total since 2018, but when it's laid out like that, it actually turned out to be a lot more than I thought! I think it’s because I painted a ton of infantry, which means lots of models, but lower points totals. I’m pretty happy with that. Its a huge chunk moved out of my backlog, even with my hefty purchases of Emperor Children and Ork stuff earlier in the year and I managed to paint for four different game systems across the year!

It's been a pretty good year of gaming too. I’ve dipped back into 40k in a big way, soend 6 months playing in my local club’s league and following summer tournament. It was good fun and somehow I ended up finishing in 4^th place. Unfortunately it also reminded me of absolutely everything I hate about the current edition of the game, so I’m probably not touching it again at least until 11^th Edition comes out. Hopefully itll refresh the game enough to draw me back in. If not, I've got plenty of other systems to grab my attention. On a much more positive note, I’ve become part of the committee running the club and been hosting a bunch of ‘niche games’ nights, which is basically anything that’s not 40k. The main one has been Necromunda campaign and it’s turning out to be really fun. Everyone seems to be having a blast and everything seems to be kicking off, so I consider that to be a roaring success!

So that was a brief look back on my hobby year. It’s not the most exhaustive, but I’ve been typing for quite a while now and I only wanted to do a fairly short post anyway. 

I really don’t have many solid plans going forward into 2026, beyond continuing to chip away on my backlog and getting about 700 more points of Dark Elves ready for the event in January. After that, it’s just a matter of going where the inspiration takes me in terms of what I work on and what I do.

 I’ve been really enjoying being in ‘Backlog Busting’ mode, so I might see how long I can stay in that groove, even beyond my +300 point goal.  I can’t see myself being able to refrain from model purchases all year, but it’ll certainly be fun trying!

So yeah, that’s my end of year rundown. Feels nice to put one out after skipping it last year. Even nicer is the fact that I actually managed to get it out before the New Year for once! Hopefully I’ll be back soon with more lovely progress to show you all soon, but until then, I hope you all have a fantastic New Year!

What are your hobby plans for 2026?

 Whatever they are, happy hobbying and I’ll catch you next year!